Mobilizing Ghosts for the Chinese Communist Revolution

Speaker: Prof. Xiaofei Kang (Department of World Religions, George Washington University)

Date/Time: October 9, 2025, Thursday. 5:00-6:15 pm (EST)

Location: Goldwin Smith Hall G64, Cornell University.

This talk examines a paradoxical dynamic in Communist engagements with religion. While denouncing religion as “superstition,” Chinese Communist propaganda simultaneously appropriated religious resources to construct a gendered narrative of revolutionary salvation. Revolutionary arts and literature mobilized tropes of ritual exorcism and ghost lore to render female bodies and sexuality emblematic of class exploitation and national liberation. This gendered metanarrative legitimized CCP leadership during the Civil War, supported land reform (1946–1953), rationalized the Party’s civilizing mission in the borderlands, and played a central role in the Mao Cult.